


Power Play

by dango96



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: BDSM, F/M, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Black Eagles Route, Masochism, No Spoilers, Petplay, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Post-Timeskip | War Phase (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Spanking, Subspace, sub-ert von vestra
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-22
Updated: 2019-12-22
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:22:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21905911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dango96/pseuds/dango96
Summary: Hubert has been working himself far too hard during the war. Falling asleep in meetings, hardly finding time to eat, snapping at perceived slights. His lover, Byleth, takes it upon herself to make him take a break — by any means necessary.
Relationships: My Unit | Byleth/Hubert von Vestra
Comments: 16
Kudos: 193





	Power Play

**Author's Note:**

> A lot of people see Hubert as a dom, but I feel like he'd get a lot out of being rendered powerless with someone he trusts. :)

Hubert was, at the best of times, a workaholic. Anyone who knew him was well aware of this fact. The war only exacerbated this — every waking hour not spent marching from one battle to the next was spent drawing up documents for Her Majesty’s purposes, cutting bribes, arranging assassinations, brewing poisons. Or anything else that she asked, really.

As far as Hubert was concerned, no task was too large, too difficult, too out of his scope. If Edelgard asked it of him, he would find a way to see it to fruition. But this war — this large, dangerous, all–consuming crusade — required many strange plans, unorthodox tactics. Many of his nights were long ones, spent hunched over a desk, researching subjects he had little to no experience with to make sure they were executed flawlessly in Her Majesty’s name.

He would never admit it, even to himself, but the stress of it all was becoming detrimental to his health. Both mentally, and physically. He was getting paler, thinner, more reclusive, more irritable. He struggled not to fall asleep in the middle of strategy meetings.

And no one knew this better than the woman who had become his closest confidant. His professor, once, but now his friend and lover. Byleth.

She’d been in close quarters with him more than anyone else during the last few months, even Her Majesty. She’d seen the drooping of his eyelids during meetings firsthand, the tremor in his fingers. She’d used intimacy, before, to entice him away from his books and his letters and his poisons, but found it becoming less and less effective.

Something had to change. For Hubert’s health, and — though Byleth knew she was being a little selfish — for her own needs. She craved his embrace, the heat of his lips. The nights spent in bed, discussing the day’s events. The feeling of his pale hand against her own, fingers laced.

Thankfully, Byleth was a clever tactician, and already had a few ideas in mind.

* * *

Night had fallen, and Hubert was, as one might expect, still diligently working away. Byleth sighed as she opened the door to his quarters only to find him sitting at his desk once again, his writing hand moving fluidly in the candlelight.

He only spared her a short glance to make sure she wasn’t an assassin, offering a curt, distracted greeting before returning to his papers. “Byleth.”

“Hubert,” she replied in turn.

She closed the door behind her, making sure to lock it tight. At the very least, he didn’t consider her a distraction; she often spent her evenings here getting through her own paperwork, or even reading, if Hubert couldn’t be persuaded to come join her on the bed. Nor did he pay any mind to the satchel she brought, surely assuming its contents to be papers or books.

But tonight, well — she fully _intended_ to be a distraction.

“Been working all day?” Byleth asked calmly, walking up to stand behind him, leaning over his shoulder. She could see open books on engineering, metalworking, and… some sort of blueprint for a hypothetical device made to move using steam. What in Sothis’s name did Edelgard have him working on this time?

“Yes, because I must,” Hubert sighed, closing one of the books. “Did you come here to give me another lecture?”

Byleth frowned at his irritability, but did not falter. “I don’t know, did you at least find time to eat?”

“Bernadetta brought me a few meals from the kitchens.”

She hummed in approval, bending down enough to plant a kiss to the hollow of his cheekbone. Her fingers danced down both of his arms, stopping to rest gently on his wrists. “I won’t scold you this time, but I do insist you take a break.”

“I can’t,” he replied, voice and expression softened from the display of affection, even as he refused her. “You're well aware of how important my work is. Her Majesty…”

She felt no disappointment at his words — she felt hardly anything at all, save for a slight flutter of excitement. After all, she’d been anticipating this exact response from him.

“You don’t understand,” Byleth said sweetly, nuzzling his cheek. Her grip suddenly became as tight as iron, catching both of his wrists, squeezing them hard enough to hurt. “I’m not giving you a choice.”

“What—”

She hardly gave him a chance to complain, wrestling his hands behind his back before he realized what was happening, grabbing rope from her satchel. She’d done this plenty of times, had known how since she was a teenager — after all, plenty of mercenary jobs requested that thieves be brought back with their heads still on their shoulders, that nobles might make an example out of them.

While Hubert was a dangerous man, Byleth knew his relative strength, and knew that hers was superior. He was a mage, lean and fit, quick enough to dodge well but lacking in sheer physical power. And she, well…

She hefted him straight out of his chair, ignoring his yelp as she carried him over her shoulder, tossing him onto the mattress with his arms tied behind his back as if he were a bag of grain. He grunted in discomfort, wiggling around until he was sitting facing her, red–faced and indignant with his hair mussed up.

Byleth could not help but grin wolfishly. She loved surprising him, loved to see him riled, to keep him guessing. Hubert had an iron composure that very few people knew how to break — and she loved finding new ways to shatter it.

“What,” Hubert sputtered, his voice a little higher than usual, “is the meaning of this?”

She calmly sat on the bed, still grinning, placing her satchel down between them. Then she set her hands to work removing the oval brooch at the throat of his dress shirt, undoing the buttons of the garment until his neck was exposed.

“I think you’ve been working much too hard, for much too long.” Her hands dropped to the satchel as he squirmed fruitlessly against his binds, glaring at her. “So I want to play a game with you.”

Hubert froze in place, eyes widening, as she lifted something from the bag — a black leather collar with a silver buckle, as well as a ring one might attach a leash to. It looked suited for a hound, but was clearly big enough for a human.

“Outside of this room, you’re still Marquis Vestra, Minister of the Imperial Household,” Byleth continued. She undid the collar, wrapped it around his neck, and then paused while she met his gaze. “But when I put this on you, I want you to forget about all of that. You’re not Marquis Vestra anymore, you’re just Hubert.”

She buckled the collar and gave it a little tug to test its tightness, as if to punctuate her words, eyes burning with equal parts determination and arousal. “And you’re also my pet. You _belong_ to me.”

“And,” he breathed, expression difficult to read and hair still a mess, “if I should desire to stop playing your game?”

“Then you say ‘eggplant’, and I let you go.”

His eyes narrowed suspiciously. She was wholly aware of the possibility of him refusing this, all of this — calling it ridiculous, humiliating, a waste of time. If he wanted to use the safeword right now, she would walk away from this, chalk it up as a failure, and find some other, less interesting way to prevent her boyfriend from self–destructing.

But Hubert did not. He simply closed his eyes, sighing heavily and shaking his head, as if giving up on something.

When he opened them again, he was smirking slightly. “What would you have me do, then?”

Byleth’s eyes widened. “What?”

“If I am your _pet._ What are your commands?”

“Oh,” she mumbled, feeling a bit sheepish all of a sudden. She’d spent so much time planning the initial execution that she hadn’t had much opportunity to think about what came after it.

First, she reached behind his back, grabbing for the knot she’d put in the rope around his wrists, slowly tugging it undone. If he was going to play along, she didn’t need to keep him tied up like this — at least, not for the time being.

Hubert flexed and rotated his hands, rubbing briefly at the red marks where the rope had been before moving to fix his mussed hair. Then he grabbed at the collar, feeling the texture of the leather, fiddling with the ring — and made no attempt to remove it.

“Strip,” Byleth commanded after a moment. “All of it. I want to see you naked.”

“As you wish, Master,” Hubert replied smoothly, and he almost didn’t sound sarcastic calling her that. His fingers moved to the front of his dress shirt, picking up where she’d left off, pulling each button undone.

“Mistress,” she corrected, a tremble of nervous excitement in her voice.

He paused, looking up at her with a raised eyebrow, but then nodded. “As you wish, Mistress.”

She pulled her thighs together more tightly and bit her lip, giddy as she watched him undress.

Once he was fully disrobed, Hubert shivered slightly at the chill in the room. But oh, did he look lovely — all angular hips and ribs and faint muscles, milky white skin only broken up by the occasional bruise or scar.

And then there was the collar. That sign of submission, of ownership. It didn’t matter if Hubert was only humoring her — Byleth felt absolutely transfixed by how handsome it looked against his throat.

He cleared his throat briefly, and she snapped out of it, feeling a little embarrassed as she scooted forward on the bed. She took his face in her hands, stroking his cheeks with her thumbs, trying to do what felt natural to her.

“Good boy,” Byleth praised softly. “You’re doing well.”

Hubert wrinkled his nose slightly, but it was difficult to tell how truly he felt about the whole thing — after all, he was half–hard already.

“Here,” she commanded suddenly, letting go of him to sit with her back to his wall. She reached into her satchel to grab a book she’d brought — a treatise on nautical combat. “Lay with your head in my lap.”

He moved a bit awkwardly, long pale limbs repositioning on the small bed, but obeyed without question, laying on his side. He positioned his head on her lap, then loosely curled up the rest of his body, as a dog might.

With her book held open in one hand, she laid the other hand in his dark curls, gently petting and scratching at his scalp. And she simply stayed like that for ten minutes or so — idly stroking his head and shoulders, reading all the while.

The sensation was pleasant enough, but eventually, Hubert’s patience began to wear thin. He lifted his head, looking longingly at the writing desk with his papers spread across it. There was still so much to do, so much to research and arrange and finalize...

“I must admit, I am struggling to see the purpose of this. My work for Her Majesty is— ah!”

A sudden, stinging slap to his bare ass interrupted Hubert mid–sentence and jolted him out of his thoughts, body jerking forward in alarm. Byleth scowled down at him, closing the book and setting it aside.

“Bad boy,” she scolded firmly. “What did I just tell you? You’re not allowed to think about that right now!”

Hubert fell abruptly silent, lowering his head. For a moment, Byleth worried that she’d genuinely hurt him — that perhaps this game had gone sour, one–sided.

But as she looked down at him, she suddenly became aware of two things. First, that Hubert was _blushing_ : a delicate pink color that dusted its way across his nose, all the way past the edge of his cheeks onto the tips of his ears.

And secondly, that he was _definitely_ not that hard a minute ago: his cock was now fully erect where it lay against his belly.

“Do you…” She hesitated, unsure of how to put it into words, starting to feel giddy and nervous once more. “Do you like it when I punish you?”

Hubert did not look at her, biting his lip slightly. She had the feeling that this revelation was just as new to him as it was to her, and that it would take some effort to trust another enough to admit it aloud.

“Do you want me to do it again?” Byleth asked, her voice dropping to something quiet and gentle, resting her hand in his hair.

“Yes,” he replied a bit too quickly, rolling onto his belly so that he was on his knees, lifting his hips to give her better access — and allowing him to pointedly bury his head in her lap, avoiding her gaze.

“Remember, if you need me to stop—”

“Eggplant,” Hubert grumbled.

“Good boy,” she praised, soothing her fingertips lightly over the soft, flushed skin she’d slapped, noting how it made him shiver.

Byleth waited, drawing out the moment, letting him anticipate it. She lifted her hand, hesitated, heard him swallow heavily.

Then she hit him again, fingers pressed together, giving him a firm spank on the opposite cheek. And she heard him _groan_ , muffled where his face was pressed into her shorts, his body trembling.

“You’ve been bad,” she said slowly, and gave him another sharp, stinging smack. And then another, and another, and another. “Working yourself to the bone, taking on too much. Even now, when I’m just trying to let you be a good boy for me, you can’t stop thinking about it.”

She heard another muffled sound, one more intelligible than the last, and paused mid–swing.

“What was that?”

Hubert lifted his head for the barest moment, still holding his ass up with trembling legs. She couldn’t see his expression, but what little she _could_ see of his face was flushed red. “I’m sorry, Mistress.”

Byleth brought her hand down again, harder than before, and the moan it tore from his throat was _raw_. She gasped quietly — she’d never heard Hubert sound like that.

She hurried to fall back into character, gripping a handful of his ass, kneading the abused skin. The sound he let out, then, was more akin to a whimper. “You should be. You’ve been neglecting yourself. And _me._ You’ve been a very bad pet.”

“Yes, Mistress,” Hubert choked out, sounding almost dazed, less aware of himself. “I’m sorry.”

“What do you want?” She demanded, grabbing the other cheek, giving it the same treatment, relishing in the noise it dragged out of him. Some of her genuine frustration was coming out, and it felt good to channel it into something productive — something pleasurable for both of them.

“Please,” he groaned, spreading his legs apart more, “punish me. I deserve it.”

So she hit him again. And again, and again — flesh hitting flesh until his skin was an angry, tingling red, until he was crying out with each slap, until his legs were trembling violently.

But he did not bend, did not break. Hubert merely gripped the sheets for dear life and shook, nearly shouting his pleasure, completely lost in the pain and need.

Finally, Byleth grabbed him again, feeling the heat radiating off his flesh. He let out a drawn–out sound near to a whine, and nearly choked on it when her other hand reached between his legs to roughly grasp his leaking member.

“You’re disgusting,” she spat, stroking him with tight, merciless thrusts. “I can’t believe you’re getting off on this.”

“Byleth,” Hubert pleaded, like a warning that he wouldn’t hold on much longer.

“ _Mistress_ Byleth,” Byleth sharply corrected, spanking him again, and she felt his cock _twitch_ in her hand. “If you’re so desperate for it, then come for me.”

She gripped him tight in one hand, then hit his ass with the other, again and again, encouraging him towards that climax — bringing her palm down hard on the tender, well–abused skin, spanking until he finally let out a loud, strangled cry.

Hubert slumped against the bed as he reached his peak, making incoherent little noises and pleas, fucking up into her fist. She felt him pulse and throb, staining the sheets, making a mess of the bed and her fingers, and realized it was lasting far longer than his usual orgasms did — the ones where he screwed up his face and remained nearly silent, held himself back as much as he possibly could.

Finally, he pushed her away from his oversensitive cock with trembling fingers, his entire body shaking. He was covered in sweat, and his bottom was a deep, painful–looking red, which made Byleth feel a twinge of guilt.

 _If nothing else,_ she thought, wiping her hand on the sheets, _he won’t be able to sit at a desk for a while._

She gently slipped the hand that wasn’t dirtied into his hair, stroking his head tenderly, before letting it slide down to his chin to tip it upward, wishing to see his face. To her shock, his cheeks were flushed and stained with tears, his expression caught between dazed and blissful; she’d never before witnessed even one of these things from him, let alone all of them in tandem.

Byleth nudged Hubert out of her lap to lay beside him, instead, easing him onto his side to face her. She wiped away the wet trails under his eyes, looking at his oddly numb expression, wondering if she’d gone too far.

She let her instincts take over, doing what felt best — and what felt best was gently stroking his face and his hair, pressing soft, reassuring kisses to his forehead, murmuring to him.

“You’re so good, Hubert,” she soothed, her hands dropping to his shoulders and chest, massaging gently here and there. “You did so good for me. You’re the perfect pet.”

Hubert closed his eyes, slowly breathing in and out, leaning into her touch. She took it to be a sign she was doing something right, and wrapped her arms around his body, gently cuddling as she whispered sweet little nothings and reassurances in his ear.

After a few minutes, he came back to her, no longer trembling quite so hard. When his eyes opened again, he looked more focused; tired, but present, gradually coming out of his headspace.

“Mistress,” he said softly, slowly, as if the word felt foreign in his mouth, but he knew he was supposed to be saying it in place of her name.

“Hubert,” Byleth murmured tenderly, her expression slipping into a worried one as she stroked his cheek. “Are you okay? Was it too much?”

“No,” he replied, firm yet drowsy, eyelids fluttering. “I... feel much better, actually. I should thank you.”

She couldn’t help the relief that flooded her, leaning in to press a kiss to the corner of his mouth. Hubert had become very precious to her — the thought of genuinely hurting him, accidentally or otherwise, was…

“You were right,” Hubert mumbled, his fingers idly running up and down her back. “I have been too preoccupied. There is… too much to do...”

Byleth gently pinched the skin on his back to remind him now wasn’t the time for that, and he squirmed a little, gasping.

“My point is,” he got out, flushing slightly either from the pain or the admission. “I was able to forget all of it for a while, thanks to you.”

Hubert turned his gaze down toward her collarbone as he continued, something close to bashful in his expression, keeping him from looking directly at her.

“You told me to stop being Marquis Vestra,” he uttered softly, “and for a moment, I did.”

She simply smiled at him, eyes thinning, feeling her heart swell with affection for the man before her. Her fingers moved up to the collar around his throat, playing with the silver ring attached to it, feeling the cold metal against her warm fingertips.

It really did look quite handsome on him, but it would be selfish to want him to wear it forever.

“Do you want me to take this off of you now?” Byleth asked, voice gentle, expecting nothing.

Hubert hesitated, thinking on it for a long moment. She absolutely loved the way he looked like this — tired, flushed, and content. There was a certain vulnerability to his expression she rarely saw, a candor made possible by this experience shared between them.

“No,” he murmured finally, closing his eyes. “Let me be Hubert for a little while longer.”

* * *

When Byleth came to visit him the next evening, she was surprised to find Hubert standing right at the entrance — and even more surprised when he dragged her into a kiss, pulling her into the room, closing the door behind them.

There was something in his expression when they parted, something difficult to place. It was in the gleam of his eyes, the teeth worrying his lip, the expectant silence between them.

“Do you want to be my pet again tonight?” Byleth asked gently, tentatively, looking into his eyes. She keenly felt the weight of the satchel on her belt, collar and leash and rope contained within.

“Yes,” Hubert choked out breathlessly, and she finally placed the emotion she saw in him — excitement.

**Author's Note:**

> Sometimes you just have to dom your boyfriend so hard he takes responsible breaks and gets a good night's sleep.
> 
> Please consider leaving a comment if you enjoyed this work!


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